This was a common practice with immigrants to America...
Oy...You live in America you speak American...
Except in my circumstances, whenever any of us kids came within earshot, my parents conversations immediately switched to english...or shall we say, Yidglish...
In fact, our family conversations were an admixture of yiddish, deutsch, hollandisch and english...
We were not allowed to take Spanish or French as a language in HS...and Latin was the only remaining choice and it sucked...
Foreign foods such as Chinese, Mexican, italian (pizza) and the like were not permitted in the house...
Yet, we were all sent to a 95% Dutch Skol, and yes, we were forbidden to associate with our classmates...(pure BS)
Of the 400 plus classmates, about 50 couples recently attended our wedding...as a class, we have an annual reunion (about 50% are still living and attend)....and by the end of August, we will have had 3 local reunions this year alone...
Forbidding the ability to assimilate or speak other languages is crippling...so we all took language 1 step further...
My sisters children speak English, German, Russian and French...
My brothers girls speak English, Japanese, German, Puni (India) and French...
My eldest grandaughter speaks English, Spanish, French and Mandarin Chinese...
The other grandkids all speak English, Spanish and French...